Q School Event Three Result - The Last Four Graduates

The last Q School event finished! The last four men came out to grab tour places are Norway's Kurt Maflin, David Gilbert and two tour debutants Adam Duffy & Stuart Carrington.

Reports of the previous two events:

• Q School Event One Round 1 Round-up - Power of Chinese Army

• Q School Event One Result - Welcome back boys!

• Q School Event Two Result - Hope of Chinese stars

Kurt Maflin from Norway qualified for final stage of China Open 2011 in March. He led Ding Junhui 4-1 before losing 4-5 in the first round. Although he had qualified for China Open but he did not have enough points to stay in the tour. He dropped off the tour this season. Nevertheless, Maflin qualified for tour again by beating Martin O'Donnell 4-1 with 66, 86, 85 & 128! Great win for him :-) 

Life is never easy for a player lives outside the UK. Maflin is considering about moving to the UK full time. "Living in Norway makes it a hell of a lot harder for me. I don't have anyone to practise with there, so I come over to the UK four or five days before each tournament. I've got a girlfriend there, we've been together ten years and we have a little boy. I am thinking about coming over to the UK full time as it would help my snooker, but it's something I need to discuss with the family when I get back to Norway."

Third Time lucky for David Gilbert! Gilbert was gutted to be defeated twice in the last round of the two previous Q School events. However, Gilbert did it in the third time, regain a tour place by beating Allan Taylor 'The Assassin' 4-1. Gilbert fell off the tour at the end of this season. He once reached last 16 of Welsh Open 2009, beating Mark Williams & Joe Perry before he lost to Mark Selby. 

"In the last couple of years I've had a terrible attitude and taken snooker for granted. I hardly practised and I didn't enter the EPTC events so I put myself in the position of dropping off the tour. I realise now how much I love snooker and I want to give it a proper go. I'm going to enter all of the events, and the way the rankings work now, you can see yourself making progress within the season."

Cliff Thorburn handed Paul
Hunter Scholarship Award
 to Adam Duffy in the Crucible, 2009.

22-year-old Adam Duffy will make his debut on the tour next season. He beaten former Scottish Open winner David Gray 4-2 after being 0-2 down. It's a pity for losing of David Gray, who suffered from final round defeat in the Event Two. Gray failed to get back on the tour. Anyway, it's cool to have a new face on the tour :-) 

"It's not sunk in yet that I'm on the main tour," said Duffy, who won the Paul Hunter Scholarship in 2009 to train free for a year at the Academy. "After that year I had a bit of a lapse, but recently I've been working hard and it has paid off." Duffy added. "I only live close by so it will be great playing in the World Championship qualifiers next season because a lot of friends will come down to support me. My target is to get into the top 64."

21-year-old Grimsby boy Stuart Carrington was the last graduate of the Q School. Carrington claimed a 4-2 victory over Stephen Craigie with breaks of 50, 66 and 83. He also had a brilliant run in the event, only lost four frames in the whole event. Congrats for this young man to make his first appearance on the tour! :-)

"It's a dream come true to turn pro, especially as I have come very close before," said Carrington. "In 2009 I finished second to Jimmy Robertson on the EASB tour - if I'd won a couple more frames over the season I would have been top and got a main tour place. Next season I'm just going to try to win as many matches as I can and stay on the tour, then the following season I'll be aiming to
push on up the rankings."




Full results of Event Three can be found here


Quarter-Final Results:                                 Last 16 Results:

Kurt Maflin 4-1 Martin O'Donnell Stuart Carrington 4-2 Stephen Craigie Adam Duffy 4-2 David Gray Allan Taylor 1-4 David Gilbert

Kurt Maflin 4-0 David McLellan Martin O'Donnell 4-3 Gary Wilson Ian Burns 1-4 Stuart Carrington Zhang Anda 2-4 Stephen Craigie Adam Duffy 4-2 Alex Davies Luke Simmonds 0-4 David Gray Kyren Wilson 1-4 Allan Taylor Brijesh Damani 1-4 David Gilbert

Three Events of Q School have finished, 12 winners who got tickets for 2011/2012 are as follow:

• Event 1: David Grace (England), Robin Hull (Finland), Andrew Norman (England), Adam Wicheard (England)
• Event 2: Simon Bedford (England), David Morris (Ireland), Tian Pengfei (China), Li Yan (China)
• Event 3: Kurt Maflin (Norway), Stuart Carrington (England), Adam Duffy (England), David Gilbert (England)

That's a wrap! :-)